Additional
supporting evidence for the O'Brien thesis of a restart of
agriculture and civilisation, at the site identified as Kharsag
in archaic Sumerian cuneiform texts, comes from scientific
evidence of domesticated figs, reported last week in Science.

Nine
small figs and 313 fig fragments were found at Gilgal 1, a
village in the Lower Jordan Valley, eight miles north of ancient
Jericho, known to have been inhabited c. 9,000 BC.

The
scientists compared the ancient figs with modern wild and
domesticated variants, and determined that they were a mutant
selectively propagated by local people. This edible fig would
not have survived without human intervention.

People
had decided to intervene in nature and supply their own food,
and this marked a dramatic change from 2.5 million years of
human history as mobile hunter gatherers.

This
shift to a sedentary lifestyle grounded in the domestication
of at least twenty wild crops and the domestication of the
pig, goat, sheep and cattle arrived in the same area about
the same time.

This
would suggest that the knowledge required for what was a very
complex technology was imported from elsewhere.

The
seven Sumerian Kharsag Epics translated by Christian O'Brien
and contained within the Genius of
the Few, describe in detail the processes involved,
and the real down to earth farming lives of the gods Anu,
Enlil and the Lady Ninkharsag, the original Divine Triad of
ancient peoples.

THE
DAWN of agriculture may have come with the domestication of
fig trees near Jericho some 11,400 years ago, archaeologists
report today.

The
discovery of ancient carbonised figs suggests that fruit,
rather than grains that are traditionally thought to have
heralded agriculture, may yield the earliest evidence of purposeful
planting.

The
figs date back roughly 1,000 years before wheat, barley and
legumes were domesticated in the region, making the fruit
trees the oldest known domesticated crop, a team reports today
in the journal Science.

Nine
small figs and 313 fig fragments were found at Gilgal I, a
village in the Lower Jordan Valley, eight miles north of ancient
Jericho, known to have been inhabited for some 200 years before
being abandoned roughly 11,200 years ago.

"This
is the oldest evidence for deliberate planting of a food-producing
plant, as opposed to just gathering food in the wild,"
says Prof Peter Bellwood of the Australian National University
in Canberra.

The find is all the more remarkable because the figs sat ignored
for decades. They were collected in the 1970s and 1980s but
were forgotten after the Israeli archaeologist who led the
excavation died.

Then the Israel Museum in Jerusalem invited Prof Ofer Bar-Yosef,
a Harvard University archaeologist, to study the finds. Today
Prof Bar-Yosef and Prof Mordechai Kislev and Anat Hartmann
of Bar-Gan University in Ramat-Gan announce how the figs have
a remarkable story to tell about the history of mankind.

"Eleven
thousand years ago there was a critical switch in the human
mind - from exploiting the earth as it to actively changing
the environment to suit our needs," says Prof Bar-Yosef.

"People decided to intervene in nature and supply their
own food rather than relying on what was provided by the gods.
This shift to a sedentary lifestyle grounded in the growing
of wild crops such as barley and wheat marked a dramatic change
from 2.5 million years of human history as mobile hunter-gatherers."

The
carbonised figs were not distorted, suggesting that they may
have been dried for human consumption. Similar fig drupelets
were found at a second site about a mile west of Gilgal.

The
scientists compared the ancient figs with modern wild and
domesticated variants, and determined that they were a mutant,
selectively propagated by local people.

In
this variety of fig, known as parthenocarpic, the fruit develops
without insect pollination and is prevented from falling off
the tree, allowing it to ripen.

However,
because such figs do not produce seeds, they are a reproductive
dead end unless humans interfere by planting, shoots from
the parthenocarpic trees.

"Once
the parthenocarpic mutation occurred, humans must have recognised
that the resulting fruits do not produce new trees and fig
tree cultivation became a common practice," Prof Bar-Yosef
says. "In this intentional act of planting a specific
variant of fig tree, we can see the beginnings of agriculture.
This edible fig would not have survived if not for human intervention."

The
mutation responsible for this parthenocarpic variety arises
on some fig trees, but relatively infrequently. The abundance
of the fig remains therefore implies that humans recognised
these rare trees and propagated them by planting branches.
Ease of planting may explain why figs were domesticated some
five millennia before other fruit trees, such as the grape,
olive and date.

Prof
Bar-Yosef says: "The reported Gilgal figs, stored together
with other staples such as wild barley, wild oat and acorns,
indicate that the subsistence strategy of these early Neolithic
fanners was a mixed exploitation of wild plants and initial
fig domestication"